A really good book: No place to hide

No Place To Hide by Glenn Greenwald is a must read book for anybody who values freedom and
democracy. It provides very interesting insights into
the whole story around the NSA and Edward Snowden. Things
that media did not tell us at the time when the NSA papers
where first published.

Privacy is the very basis of democracy and it is shocking
to see how the security state abuses its power and breaks
the law under the cover of fighting terrorism.

I still remember the times of the cold war when I was
a child and we were told that it is the press freedom
that helps to control the power of the government.
This was an enabler of our freedom us in the west. It was not
like that in communist societies.
The desire of political dissidents from the east to
escape to the west was proof of that. Dissidents that
were able to escape communism where denounced as traitors
by their governments and celebrated in the west.

This book shows clearly how things have changed. Dissidents
are now choosing to move from the west to the east. The US
main stream media has become an institution of the government.
A clear sign of decay in the "free west".

Much remains to be done to rectify the problem.
Those at the highest level of government
breaking the law have not been prosecuted yet.

Google said at the time of the NSA disclosures that Google is not
aware of a "backdoor for the NSA" in it's systems
and that seems to be a true statement because the NSA was allowed
to use the front door.

The book made me really think that it is the balance of power,
and clear competition that is needed to achieve great things. Russia
was the single biggest contributor to the American Apollo program
and their success to land on the moon.

The CPU manufacturer Intel would never have been able to build great processors without
its competitor AMD and the AMD 64 bit architecture that we find today
in every single Intel chip is proof of that. There are many more examples that show how competition and
balance of power is needed to achieve great things. The wrong doings
of the government came only to such extreme levels because
of the lack of opposition and the absence of alternatives. Obama is
not an alternative to Bush and his policy. Obama did not have different ideas
and solutions. Obama continued in the same direction.